2 min read

How to Detect Affiliate Fraud?

Affiliate marketing is nothing new, yet remains a top way to grow a business online. The downside to this reputation is that it can draw those with less than sterling reputations. Unfortunately, as much as 45% of affiliate traffic today is fraudulent. Considering this is a $12 billion industry, that’s a crippling statistic for many companies.

Fraudsters employ numerous methods to skim capital from affiliate marketing campaigns. Some of these methods include infecting visitor devices with adware or spyware, cloning competitor affiliate sites and stealing their traffic, using stolen personal information to generate fake leads or sales, and cookie stuffing to earn credit for leads through misattribution. To help you recognize the many ways affiliate fraudsters run their schemes, we’ve put together this quick read on how to detect affiliate fraud.

What Are Some Ways to Detect Affiliate Fraud?

The first step towards preventing losses from affiliate fraud is detection. By catching the nefarious activities of affiliate fraudsters in real-time, you’ll be able to limit their negative impacts.

Here are some ways you can detect affiliate fraud:

1. Analyzing and Logging Traffic Quality

Tracking and analyzing the quality of your traffic is one of the best ways to detect affiliate fraud sooner than later. Traffic originating from known data centers is often a leading indicator that IP address fraud is going on. With ad fraud solutions like Anura, it’s possible to catch this type of traffic in real time so action can be taken in real time. Anura’s solution uses machine learning and human analysis of hundreds of data points to catch precisely these types of patterns.

2.Keeping Track of Conversion Rates

Sometimes affiliates find new ways to drive better traffic that produce spikes in conversion rates. But outliers are rare by definition, so keeping track of these instances is crucial for detecting affiliate fraud. If you see sudden increases in conversions from certain affiliates, this can be a signal that fraudulent methods are being utilized for quick earnings. If you see affiliates producing exponentially higher conversion rates, be wary. By tracking conversion rate averages by individual affiliates, you’ll be able to detect fraud much sooner.

3. Conducting Affiliate Behavior Analysis

Conducting analysis on the behavior of affiliates is another great way to detect fraud fast. When you see a spike in sales of certain products that are tougher to convert, it could indicate affiliate fraud. If these sales are coming from newer affiliates, that’s an even stronger sign of trouble. Another example is an increase in chargebacks. However, there’s a long delay between paying affiliates and being hit with chargebacks. This highlights the importance of detecting affiliate fraud as soon as possible.

Keep Affiliate Fraud at Bay with Anura

Affiliate fraud is a serious issue that impacts the revenues of advertisers. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent it, such as integrating an anti-fraud solution. Anura provides the best real-time solution for the challenges faced by companies trying to cope with ad fraud.

Unlike competing affiliate fraud solutions that rely on machine learning alone, Anura takes the extra step of analyzing the data using human experts. This means you’ll enjoy zero false positives and the greatest possible reduction in affiliate fraud compared to other solutions. See for yourself today by requesting a free trial.